Revealed: When Top Gear star Jeremy Clarkson went on strike

Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter, who said strikers should be 'executed',
once joined a walkout himself.

Jeremy Clarkson is known for being outspoken. Photo: Getty Images

Tim Walker. Edited by Richard Eden

7:29AM GMT 02 Dec 2011

Could Jeremy Clarkson’s intervention in the debate about the public sector strikes be due to a guilty conscience?

The Top Gear presenter, who declared that strikers should be “executed” in front of their families, once joined a union-organised walkout while he was a reporter on the Rotherham Advertiser.

“I didn’t really know why,” admitted Clarkson, who is a friend of David Cameron. “I still don’t, actually. I did consider remaining at my post, but my new colleagues said that if I did this they would set me on fire. So, being an invertebrate, I laid my principles on my desk, walked out and spent the next six weeks calling my new boss a scab.

“This was the great thing about striking. You could get away with doing things that in ordinary life were just not possible, and everyone loved you for it.”

Forget the “high drama” promised in Downton Abbey’s Christmas episode, the real mystery is why Hugh Bonneville, who plays the Earl of Grantham, appears to have become so reluctant to talk to the press.

On Thursday night, the star of the film Conspiracy of Silence gave a a Bible reading at the Rainbow Trust’s Christmas Carol concert at St Paul’s in Knightsbridge. However, one of the organisers warned Mandrake: “Unfortunately, Hugh Bonneville will not have time to speak to anyone.”